It's All Greek to Me
by hale-marie
Summary: Zelda wonders why she's had such bad luck with men. All of her relationships have failed, and now after her most recent breakup, she looks to fill her empty heart with someone who could actually understand her.
1. Chapter 1

Zelda sits on the couch staring at a blank TV screen. The house is empty, save for Salem, and he's sleeping in Sabrina's room, most likely. Sabrina is off at college, nearly finished with her degree in journalism, and Hilda is doing goodness knows what. Sleeping with some man in the Pleiades? Skiing on Mars? Or maybe she's pulling a late night at the coffee shop. Clocks in various rooms can be heard, but only the grandfather clock on the steps chimes when it strikes one.

She muses on her recent breakup with Arth—Professor Carlin. It won't do to use first names anymore since they're still colleagues. Still, she feels a tug at her heart thinking of the loss of another lover. Another one, come and gone.

 _Will I ever get it right?_

Zelda isn't sure. It's hard dating as a woman of high ambition, but Zelda won't squelch that for anyone. If she ever finds someone who can keep up with it, they'll have to understand. Nonacceptance is just unacceptable. Why should she dim herself to match a lesser mind?

Shifting to lean back, Zelda puts her arms out and lets her head fall backward, relishing in the slight dizzy feeling she gets from the quick movement. Maybe she can spin around and around until she's so dizzy she falls, and then when the world rights itself again, everything will be better. It's in this position that Zelda falls asleep.

She dreams of tidal waves and heavy winds, and most perplexing, fabric blowing around. And it's this that she's most entranced by, watching as it twists in the air. It creates ethereal shapes and filters the sunlight, and Zelda could almost swear she's watching magic in tangible dream-form. As the waves are crashing, she's vaguely aware that maybe this dream is not just about pretty things but the destruction happening around her. She's conjured a forcefield that keeps her from getting knocked around by the rush of water, but it's destroyed everything else in its wake.

Off to her side, she hears meowing. She looks, but can't find the source and drops her protection distractedly. Her mistake is realized too late, though, as a huge wave is barreling toward her, and her only course of action is to put her arms up and hope it doesn't kill her. It crashes down and sends Zelda spiraling through murky abyss, and when she feels herself thrown upside down by the current, she bolts upright from her position on the couch.


	2. Chapter 2

When Zelda comes to her senses, she feels sweat drip down her forehead and wipes it away with a disgusted sigh. She spies Salem rolling on the floor dramatically.

"I'm wasting away to nothing, and you're just sitting there!"

"Salem, you could have gotten the kibble yourself or asked Hilda to help you rather than waking me up," Zelda scolds, suddenly annoyed. She brushes sweaty palms on her jeans and stands up, stretching out a painful kink in her neck. Of course, she can't just be heartbroken right now because she's always the responsible one. Always taking care of everyone else.

"It's not my fault I have to eat. You put that lock on the fridge, and now I can't get into it," Salem retorts and rolls to his feet, stretching as cats do.

Zelda rolls her eyes and starts to walk through to the kitchen, cat just behind her feet. Something is strange about the house this morning, Zelda thinks, and she stops just before the kitchen. Salem walks into her legs and hisses.

"What was that for?" he asks angrily and swishes his tail behind him. He jumps to the dining room table and away from Zelda's dangerous feet.

"Did my sister ever come home last night?" Zelda asked aloud. It was odd for Hilda to neglect Salem in the morning. She turned to the cat.

Salem sits on the table and curls his tail around his paws. "I don't recall," he lies as he thinks about playing in Sabrina's closet and staring in the enchanted mirror as his reflection tell him how fabulous he looks in a feather boa. And boy, did he look good.

Zelda's hands find their comfortable place on her hips, and she stares down the cat. "You're lying, Salem. You've got that vacant look in your eyes. Where is Hilda?"

Salem's eyes widen, and Zelda notices a line of fur raising on his neck. "I don't know," Salem says, and it's a half-truth. The witch across from him narrows her eyes in that scary way that suggests magical punishment in the form of extra limbs or just regular loss of snacks for the day.

"Salem," Zelda warns.

The cat eyes a small crackling at her fingertips and decides on self-preservation over whatever magical outburst might happen. "She went to Saturn for their Festival of Rings, but I don't know if she came back last night pleasedon'thurtme," he finishes quickly and cowers.

Zelda closes her eyes and lets out a deep breath. "Of course. She did tell me that she was planning on going out."

She wonders briefly how she could have forgotten. A whole weekend alone would normally have made the scientist giddy with excitement, but lately she's felt heavy and spacey. It's been weeks since her breakup, but she still feels like she's moving through molasses. "Huh," she breathes and turns to her previous destination to feed the cat.

"Zelly, are you okay?" Salem bounces up to his spot on the counter where his food bowl resides. It hasn't been moved since the dog tried to take over and kick him out as a gesture of permanence by the Spellman sisters. Salem isn't always convinced that they'll keep him around, but this helps.

Zelda nods and pulls the bag of food out of the cupboard, scooping food into the ceramic dish. She's quiet as she tidies up the kitchen, wiping a counter down with a rag to clean it of some sticky mess, no doubt Salem's. As she throws the dishrag into the sink with a self-promise to put it in the laundry later—lies—she hears the toaster pop behind her. Turning, she spies a postcard and picks it up, still smoking and sets it on the table while she rinses her hands. It's from Hilda. A picture of her smiling and holding a shiny piece of ice from Saturn's rings.

It brings back memories of childhood and when they'd go as a family. Some good, some bad, but always Zelda thinks of when Vesta tried to dangle them off the edge of Saturn and by some quirk of fate neither girl drifted into space. Their parents found them and got rightly angry at the eldest daughter but ultimately did nothing to help. With a shrug, Zelda zapped the postcard to an empty space on the front of the fridge.

"I'm going to go take a nap," Zelda says and waves a hand to appear in her bedroom. It's dark colors and cozy. She loves red so dark it's almost black. It's still very medieval, but she finds comfort in it. Arthur loved it too when he came to stay the night.

Suddenly Zelda doesn't find it so cozy, but vows to fix it the next morning—not a lie. She finds in her nightstand the bottle of dreamless sleep potion she made last week to keep the nightmares at bay and unstoppers the vial before tipping it back. The tastes of black licorice and ginger assault her senses, and she shudders before conjuring a glass of water to swish away the lingering potion on her tongue. Knowing it won't take long before she'll fall asleep, she sets the vial on her nightstand and crawls under heavy covers. She'll keep the weight of this duvet, she thinks, as she covers her face and hugs the blanket closer.


	3. Chapter 3

When Zelda wakes again, it's because there's a bright ray of sunlight peeking through the curtains and hitting her eyes. She sits up and presses her palms against her eye sockets, resting there for a moment before she chances a look at the clock. 5:00pm. So she hasn't wasted the whole day then.

She folds the covers back and scoots to the edge of the bed. With her feet resting on plush, dark carpeting, she pauses to listen to a sound coming from downstairs. Salem is talking to someone, but she can't quite make out the words. Oh well. Probably invited his poker dogs over again, though she keeps telling him to stop gambling with them.

Zelda stands up and presses her hands against her back, arching into a stretch. When she feels a satisfied pop in her spine, she stops and straightens up before moving to open the curtains. The sunlight isn't as bright now that it's nearing evening, but the warmth is nice on Zelda's face. She gives a small smile toward the bright ball of light and turns around to look at her bedroom.

It _is_ dark, she thinks. Maybe after a couple of centuries of living here like this, it was time for a change. But what? She didn't want to match the décor in the rest of the house. It was just too plain.

The rumbling of her stomach drew attention away from where her gaze was fixed on the wall. With a sigh, Zelda realized that she probably needed to eat something since she skipped breakfast earlier.

With sluggish steps, she makes her way downstairs and into the kitchen to see Salem next to the phone but reading from a newspaper.

"Were you talking to someone?" she asks the cat.

Salem flicks his tail. "I was, but I'm not now. She hung up."

Zelda rolls her eyes. Salem was always looking for dates. It's a wonder he hasn't found the entire female population of the Earth twice over and been rejected. Still, it's not like he can just go to the Other Realm. Most witches and warlocks there would probably curse him into oblivion.

She opens the freezer, inspecting a couple of things on the shelf labeled "Actual Food".

Sabrina broke out a label maker after accidentally eating some potions ingredients instead of food and turning purple for three days. Salem laughed until he coughed up furballs, and Hilda kept turning everything Sabrina touched purple.

 _This house is chaos_ , Zelda thinks, and takes out a package of frozen chicken. She turns to the microwave, but decides against the waiting time and just zaps it onto a plate, steaming and aromatic.

Salem turns and reaches out with a paw. "May I..."

"Absolutely not, Salem." Zelda smacks his paw and brings the plate to the table. Darn cat.

She sits with all the grace her age has taught her to, despite wanting to slouch and cry. Six hundred and forty-seven years of grace, to be exact, but Zelda wasn't counting. She spies the cat looking at her intensely, and turns to her food, relishing in the taste of a hot meal. The first, she realizes, in a good week or two. Or three. Huh.

"Zelda, are you okay?" Salem asks, and jumps down from his counter perch to a chair at the table. The witch looks distraught. He knows she's still taking her breakup really hard, but the casual relationship she had with what's-his-name wasn't something her expected her to _cry_ over. Yet, here she was three weeks later, still moping about the house.

Zelda did not want to talk about her failures with the king of failure. Instead, she says, "I'm having a hard time figuring out how to decorate my bedroom."

Salem, about to start cleaning his paw, pauses. "Just read a vacation magazine or something," he offers, not expecting that as her response.

The witch mulls the thought over in her head. They do have a couple of magazines that just came in. Rather than reading for pleasure, she could read for research. Zelda likes research, and supposes this is no different from working on her labtop. When she's finished eating, she puts her plate in the dishwasher and zaps the dirty rag to the laundry room.

She walks to her previous spot on the couch and grabs a magazine from the side table, flipping through absentmindedly. Maybe the Italian villa style would be nice, but still reminds her too much of the living room. Nothing else really catches her attention, so she tosses the magazine to the coffee table with a loud smack and picks up the other.

This one features glamourous women in fancy homes in exotic locations. The one in India is nice, but still not something she'd want for her own room. The California vineyard is also pretty, but still not what she's looking for.

There it is: blues and whites, and an expanse of ocean, and Zelda can almost picture herself there. Salty air, sun and more sun, and warmth, and the promise of a good tan. Zelda catches a whiff of a new scent and looks up from the magazine to find herself perched on a bench in…

"Greece?"


End file.
